This invention concerns a system to identify, grip, position and manipulate bobbins.
The invention is applied particularly, but not exclusively, to position, manipulate and transport bobbins made of aluminum or its alloys after thin or very thin yarns, such as for example yarns for women's stockings, have been wound onto them. The problems relating to the identification, manipulation and transport of aluminum bobbins used to support thin and very thin yarns, such as those for women's stockings or other similar yarns, are known to the state of the art. The reels obtained after winding are cylindrical or like the double trunk of a counter opposed cone.
The yarn is wound on the bobbins at speeds which can reach up to 28/30,000 revolutions per minute.
The yarn can be wound onto the bobbins with a vertical axis, as in the classical arrangement of a spinning machine, or with a horizontal axis, as the bobbin is constrained by tailstocks.
But also in the vertical arrangement the bobbin can be arranged between tailstocks.
Given their extremely limited thickness, the threads are very sensitive and the merest contact with the fingers of the machine operator is enough to disarrange them and make automatic unwinding impossible, or in any case ruin the threads.
For this reason, the reels must not only be correctly identified by the appropriate identification devices, given the wide range of types of threads or yarns which they can carry in a wound state, they must also be manipulated with great care and attention by the machine operators, who must take care that they do not contact the wound thread or yarn or allow it to be contacted by any element.
A further problem is that it is difficult to constrain in a correct position of identification the identification devices on the bobbins during the winding step, because of the very high speeds reached. The identification devices, moreover, must be sufficiently big so as to be easily identified, in order to reduce the time needed to look for and select them, and also to reduce the risk of errors.